Field of the Invention
The invention relates to systems, devices and methods for providing real-time participant-to-participant race-comparative information, and for providing a winning strategy.
In large athletic events, it is often the case that competitive athletes do not know who they are racing, how far ahead the leaders are or how fast they are going. Participants are often grouped by age and sex, and the groups are often started at different times in order to lessen the crowding on the race course. In multiple-segment races, such as triathlons, participants typically change clothes between swimming, biking and running Amidst this sea of all participants, it is nearly impossible for participants to know how they are doing in their group, and whether to speed up. Currently, unable to determine race position within the race group, participants blindly finish and hope for the best. If participants had real-time information of the race group leaders, and relative positions, participants could alter their pace enough to make a difference in their finishing positions, perhaps enough to win or place.
Description of the Related Art
State of the art products focus upon the participant's heart rate, cadence and pace. Most store personal data for later download to computer and display. Some current devices allow a participant to “virtually” race someone in the past. While these devices are great for training, and are used to regulate pace in a race, they universally fail to provide essential data for a participant to know how to win today's race.
State of the art race operators provide verification that each participant has traversed the entire race course by laying out “gates” through which all registered participants must travel. Race operators provide each registered participant with an identification tag, so that each gate can record the participant as the participant passes the gate. Typically, all registered participants are required to wear an RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag, or some similar device for wireless, short-distance transmission of a signal from the race participant to the race gate mat. A gate computer collects the time each participant passes through each gate. At the conclusion of the race, the race operator prints out the “Finish Gate” results and posts the results to a swarm of participants anxious to find out their position in the race; that is to say, who came in first, second, third, etc. Until these results are posted, participants generally do not know their race position. It may happen that a participant learns after the race that he or she was only seconds off the podium.
After the event, race operators collect the data from all gates and within a few days, provide details on websites about gate times for each participant. Some races may be triathlons, involving swimming, bicycling and running race segments, while other races may be a single event, like running, one or more times around a race course, passing a gate at each race segment. These are generally termed “split times”. From the website display of gates times, a given participant can determine his or her split times for each race segment, e.g. the participant took 00:32:05 on the swim, 00:06:02 in transition to bike, 03:05:30 on the bike, 00:01:30 in transition to run, and 02:01:30 on the run. While these details may be helpful for future races, they are useless to the participant wanting to win today's race, in real-time.
Some race operators are capable of transmitting gate results to websites during a race, and some even provide projected finish times for each participant. However, these provide no information to the participant during the race.